them to the Arx, he captured all the horses, and caught outside and slew the men offhand who could not escape. This tallies exactly with the idea that the flight took place down the Polden ridge to the Burgh or Castrum there occupied, still known as the Bally or Baily field-i.e., Castle Baily. The men outside were then detailed to watch and keep the cattle and horses on the two islands of Doneham just outside. If the Geweorc was really at Bratton Castle or near Chippenham, the object of it is not so clear, considering that the Danes had, both by sea and land, been besieging King Alfred behind the line of the Parret, and to emphasise this cardinal fact again and again-that he was so straitly beset that he could only make daily struggles and fights. No; the "Arx quam firmaverant Dani" must, I feel convinced, be located at Vikings Pill on the Parret; and here Guthrum and the Danes, cut off from their two islands and the booty stored there, were starved into surrender after fourteen days. They had a spring of water certainly, as now, to drink, but their food failed them. It may be noted as a striking historical coincidence that when King Kenwalch, the first great Saxon conqueror of the Parret, defeated the Waelas Britons at Pen (Pensel wood, not far from King Alfred's rallying-point before Edington), he drove them down to the Pedridan mouth or Parret mouth, much in the

or

same way as King Alfred drove the Danes down the Polden ridge to Vikings Pill.

There is one place - name mentioned in the Chronicleviz., Eglea, where King Alfred halted the night before the battle-which seems to give us a further clue. This would seem to have been a place in the well-known Glastonbury XII. Hides, written frequently in old documents as Eggerley, but locally pronounced now as a dissyllable. Sometimes it was written Edgarley; but clearly it could never have been so named after King Edgar, Glastonbury's great king, as the plot of ground was for centuries before him part of the original grant given to the

first founders of the primitive church. It was fitting that King Alfred should halt here before his unsuspected swoop upon the Danes below-just, indeed, as it was fitting that the decisive battle of Edington should be fought upon a Glastonbury Manor. Yonder, within sight of the combatants and visible from Polden ridge, rose the historic Tor, crowned even then by a chapel erected to St Michael, the guardian archangel of the lonely moors, replete with a thousand memories and 8 thousand associations. indeed, might King Alfred's troops have invoked his aid as well as that of St Cuthbert, in whose honour a noble church at Wells was destined in due course to arise as a memorial of the great victory.

Well,

To-day, the traveller by the

THE peculiar excellence of English inns was at one time the admiration of all foreigners who visited our shores, and according to Lord Macaulay it was an admiration which was thoroughly well deserved. Nor, if we judge from contemporary literature, do they seem to have forfeited their title to it, down to at least the middle of the last century, when the introduction of a new mode of travelling rendered inevitable a corresponding change in the accommodation provided for travellers. But the letters on this subject which have recently appeared in the columns of The Times' seem rather too severe on the modern innkeeper, and to indicate in some respects that the writers do not sufficiently discriminate between what we commonly call an inn and what is generally known as a public-house. No doubt they are divided from each other by a very narrow line. And under the influence of changes above referred to, they have to some extent changed places. Inns have shrunk into public - houses; public-houses have grown into inns; and until we know exactly against what kind of houses of public entertainment the indictment is directed, we are not of course in a position to estimate its justice.

It is only quite recently, and then only in a few favoured districts, that the demand has arisen in any of our English

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INNS.

villages for a class of entertainment superior to what the village public was capable of supplying. To this day, at any great distance from London, except perhaps in the home counties, the landlord of the Dog and Pheasant" or the Scythe and Shears would not know what to make of the motoring tourist expecting to find within his walls the comforts of a genuine inn. He has not been used to such visitors, and it will be some time before he begins to expect them or to provide for them, if he ever does. In those villages which lie upon the turnpike roads he may acquire this experience rather sooner, but elsewhere such foresight must not be expected from him. He cannot be charged with negligence or churlishness because he does not satisfy a class of customers for whom his establishment was never intended.

But I fear it is quite true that the class of country inns which Dickens was so fond of describing-partly perhaps for the studies of character which they afforded — such as the "Saracen's Head" at Towcester, where everything looked "as it always does look in every decent English inn, as if the traveller had been expected and their comforts provided for days beforehand,"-I fear that inns of this description are no longer what they were; and the reason lies upon the surface. The supply depends

on the demand. The inn depended on "the road," and when the road was in its glory the country inn flourished in great prosperity. Through all the smaller country towns there was a perpetual stream of traffic. Coach followed coach, chaise followed chaise: "Horses on!" was the constant cry as carriage after carriage drove up to the inn door, and the postboy dispostboy dismounted to make room for a fresh pair, which in a few minutes came trotting down the yard with the ostler. Sometimes a great man rolled up with his carriage and four, and this constant supply of good business made it worth the landlord's while to keep a good house and have everything comfortable for such guests as should desire to break their journey for the night, or to alight and refresh themselves before proceeding with it.

If you wished to dine or lunch, you were shown into a neat parlour looking out upon a pretty garden, and served with such a cold round of beef, or such a roast fowl, and apple - tart, as you may look for in vain in any London restaurant at the present day. And this kind of accommodation was not the exception, but the rulenot confined to the principal inns in the county towns, but to be met with in most of the little market towns or even large villages where sixty years ago old customs and traditions still lingered. I remember that when I was at

college such inns were to be found at distances varying from seven or eight to fifteen miles from Oxford; and that these were not in any way dependent on University men for their support I am quite certain, for the habit of taking long rides into the country and dining at such places was unknown to the great majority of undergraduates in my time, and was limited, as far as I know, to the small set of men with whom I most consorted. A late dignitary of the Church, the Dean of

was one

of us who enjoyed these little excursions, I think, more than any of the party. Sometimes we rode to Wychwood Forest and dined in the garden of the little inn at Witney, where we were generally able to get fish, and always excellent cutlets, and gooseberry and currant tarts. And this was twelve miles from Oxford. Such visits as ours could only have been very few and far between. Once, I remember, we rode to Chalgrove Field, where Hampden was killed, and dined at the little town of Watlington, about the same distance from Oxford as Witney, and here found equally good accommodation, though, of course, we were wholly unexpected. wonder whether any of these old inns still exist. Some, I believe, are still patronised by the local aristocracy, who use them for balls and such like county festivities. But the old traffic which formerly kept them alive, and which must have been gradually subsiding

I

at the time I refer to, has probably departed. Perhaps they still keep up a farmers' ordinary on market day-a relic of their former prosperity to which they still cling. Or possibly the magistrates may hold their meetings there. But the old coaching and posting daysthe sound of the horn and the crack of the whip-have long been things of the past.

a

Besides the regular business of the road, as above mentioned, there would be the frequent order for post-horses from the neighbouring hall or parsonage, whose occupiers either had no carriage-horses of their own, or did not care to use them for a long drive at night to dinner party ten miles off. Often, too, the squire or the baronet, if going to London, would send for post-horses to take him the first stage, so that it is easy to see that the country inn in those days, in the hands of a man who understood his business, might be a thriving concern.

But the country inn of which I have the fondest recollection is the old roadside inn, still to be found, I daresay, in secluded situations, but no longer required in many places where it once formed a picturesque feature of the road. This is the style of inn which Dickens loved to celebrate and Morland to paint. Who does not know the inn where Smike and Nicholas put up on the Portsmouth Road, and where they shared the beefsteak - pudding with Mr Vincent Crummles? Who does not know the "strange old place, built of a

kind of shingle, inlaid as it were with cross-beams with gable-topped windows projecting completely over the path," where Tom Smart, after crossing Marlborough Downs, had his six tumblers of punch? Who does not know the innkitchen described by Washington Irving, a description often given by others, but specially interesting as coming from an American to whom England was still comparatively strange?

But the ideal roadside inn which I have in my eye at this moment is not exactly like any of the above. It shall stand back from the road, from which it is divided by a broad margin of turf. In front is a large oak, whose ancient branches, stretching towards the road on one side and nearly touching the casement windows on the other, afford a pleasant shade to the sleepy waggoner lying on the bench underneath it. On one side a gate opens into the stable - yard, beyond which you get a glimpse of hay- and corn-ricks, showing that the host is a small farmer as well as an innkeeper. On the other side lies the kitchen - garden, where the scarlet-runners just show over the top of the hedge. It is a still bright day in September, and there is a warm, drowsy air over the whole place-such as we often experience in that pleasant month. At the back of the house is a large wood, where the farmer, if you like, can give you a day's rabbit - shooting. Drawn up on one side, just off the road, is the waggon belong